there can be no evil so great as the ignorance or disregard of them. It is the very madness of mock prudence to oppose the removal of a poisoned dish on account of the pleasant sauces or nutritious viands which would be lost with it! The dish contains destruction to that for which alone we ought to wish the palate to be gratified, or the body to be nourished. The prejudices of one age are condemned even by the prejudiced of the succeeding ages: for endless are the modes of folly, and the fool joins with the wise in passing sentence on all modes but his own. Who cried out with greater horror against the murderers of the prophets than those who likewise cried out, Crucify him! crucify him! The truth-haters of every future generation will call the truth-haters of the preceding ages by their true names, for even these the stream of time carries onward. In fine, truth, considered in itself, and in the effects natural to it, may be conceived as a gentle spring or water-source, warm from the genial earth, and breathing up into the snowdrift that is piled over and around its outlet. It turns the obstacle into its own form and character, and as it makes its way, increases its stream. And should it be arrested in its course by a chilling season, it suffers delay, not loss, and awaits only for a change in the wind to awaken and again roll onward. The Friend. CHARACTER OF ALFRED. I must now turn to our great monarch, Alfred, one of the most august characters that any age has ever produced; and when I picture him after the toils of government and the dangers of battle, seated by a solitary lamp, translating the Holy Scriptures into the Saxon tongue,-when I reflect on his moderation in success, on his fortitude and perseverance in difficulty and defeat, and on the wis dom and extensive nature of his legislation,-I am really at a loss which part of this great man's character most to admire. Yet above all, I see the grandeur, the freedom, the mildness, the domestic unity, the universal character of the Middle Ages condensed into Alfred's glorious institution of the trial by jury. I gaze upon it as the immortal symbol of that age,- —an age called indeed dark,— but how could that age be considered dark, which solved the difficult problem of universal liberty, freed man from the shackles of tyranny, and subjected his actions to the decision of twelve of his fellow-countrymen? Literary Remains. MILTON. In Milton's mind itself there were purity and piety absolute; an imagination to which neither the past nor the present were interest ing, except as far as they called forth and enlivened the great ideal in which and for which he lived; a keen love of truth, which, after many weary pursuits, found a harbor in the sublime listening to the still voice in his own spirit, and as keen a love of his country, which, after a disappointment still more depressive, expanded and soared into a love of man as a probationer of immortality. These were, these alone could be, the conditions under which such a work as the "Paradise Lost" could be conceived and accomplished. By a lifelong study Milton had known "What is of use to know, What best to say could say, to do had done. To his large heart gave utterance due, his heart and he left the imperishable total, as a bequest to the ages coming, in the "Paradise Lost." Literary Remains. PARTY PASSION. "Oh, "Well, sir!" exclaimed a lady, the vehement and impassionate partisan of Mr. Wilkes, in the day of his glory, and during the broad blaze of his patriotism, "Well, sir, and will you dare deny that Mr. Wilkes is a great man, and an eloquent man?" by no means, madam! I have not a doubt respecting Mr. Wilkes's talents!" "Well, but, sir, and is he not a fine man, too, and a handsome man?" "Why, madam, he squints, doesn't he?" "Squints! yes, to be sure he does, sir, but not a bit more than a gentleman and a man of sense ought to squint !" Literary Remains. EFFECTS OF NOVEL READING. It cannot but be injurious to the human mind never to be called into effort; the habit of receiving pleasure without any exertion of thought, by the mere excitement of curiosity and sensibility, may be justly ranked among the worst effects of habitual novel reading. Those who confine their reading to such books dwarf their own faculties, and finally reduce their understandings to a deplorable imbecility. Like idle morning visitors, the brisk and breathless periods hurry in and hurry off in quick and profitless succession; each, indeed, for the moments of its stay, prevents the pain of vacancy, while it indulges the love of sloth; but all together they leave the mistress of the house (the soul, I mean) flat and exhausted, incapable of attending to her own concerns, and unfitted for the conversation of more rational guests. EDWARD IRVING, 1792-1834. THIS celebrated preacher was born at Annan, in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, and educated at the University of Edinburgh. After finishing his theological course of studies, he officiated in various churches, until he was recommended to the notice of Dr. Chalmers, who engaged him as his assistant in St. John's parish, Glasgow. Here he gained so much reputation, that he was invited to take charge of the Caledonian church in Cross street, Hatton Garden, London; and he entered upon his new field in August, 1822. He had not long occupied it before he attracted very large congregations by the force and eloquence of his discourses, and the singularity of his appearance and gesticulation. Tall, athletic, of a sallow countenance, with a profusion of jet-black hair reaching to his shoulders, added to a strong Scottish accent, accompanied with violent and ungraceful, but impressive gestures; while he was constantly straining after original ideas, embellishing his discourses with the metaphors of poets and philosophers, and adding to the piquancy of his censures by personal allusions and homely truths—all these characteristics tended for a time to give him unbounded popularity, and the great and the wealthy thronged to hear him. But in a few years the tide began to turn: his eccentricity had become familiar, and the curiosity of novelty-hunters was satiated. Envy and jealousy watched his course, and he was formally accused of heresy by the Presbytery of London in 1830. The charges were, that his views of the "atonement, imputation, and satisfaction," were not orthodox, and after a protracted trial he was ejected from his church on the 3d of May, 1832. Soon after this, consumption laid its hand upon him, and he died on the 6th of December, 1834. Dr. Chalmers, on meeting with his senior class at Glasgow, on the morning he heard of Mr. Irving's death, paid the following tribute to his memory: "He was one of those whom Burns calls the nobles of nature. His talents were so commanding, that you could not but admire him; and he was so open and generous, that it was impossible not to love him. He was the evangelical Christian grafted on the old Roman-with the lofty stern virtues of the one, he possessed the humble graces of the other. The constitutional basis and groundwork of his character was virtue alone; and, notwithstanding all his errors and extravagances, which both injured his character in the estimation of the world, and threw discredit upon much that was good and useful in his writings, I believe him to be a man of deep and devoted piety." Mr. Irving's publications were "For the Oracles of God, four Orations: "For Judgment to Come, an Argument in nine parts;" also "Last Days, and Discourses on the Evil Character of the Times:" also Sermons, Lectures, and occasional DisBut of all that he wrote, nothing exceeds, for beauty and eloquence, his Preliminary Essay to an edition of "Horne on the Psalms," from which we extract the following admirably drawn courses. I need not add any further remarks of my own on the character of this excellent man, as in the extracts from Carlyle will be found something far more satisfactory from one who knew him personally. CHARACTER OF DAVID. Now, as the apostle, in writing to the Hebrews concerning the priesthood of Christ, calls upon them to consider Melchizedek, his solitary majesty, and singular condition and remarkable honor; so call we upon the church to consider David, the son of Jesse, his unexampled accumulation of gifts, his wonderful variety of conditions, his spiritual riches and his spiritual desolation, and the multifarious contingencies of his life; with his faculty, his unrivalled faculty, of expressing the emotions of his soul, under all the days of brightness and days of darkness which passed over his head. For thereby shall the church understand how this the lawgiver of her devotion was prepared by God for the work which he accomplished, and how it hath happened that one man should have brought forth that vast variety of experience, in which every soul rejoiceth to find itself reflected. There never was a specimen of manhood so rich and ennobled as David, the son of Jesse, whom other saints haply may have equalled in single features of his character; but such a combination of manly, heroic qualities, such a flush of generous, godlike excellencies, hath never yet been seen embodied in a single man. His Psalms, to speak as a man, do place him in the highest rank of lyrical poets, as they set him above all the inspired writers of the Old Testament equalling in sublimity the flights of Isaiah himself, and revealing the cloudy mystery of Ezekiel; but in love of country, and glorying in its heavenly patronage, surpassing them all. And where are there such expressions of the varied conditions into which human nature is cast by the accidents of Providence, such delineations of deep affliction and inconsolable anguish, and anon such joy, such rapture, such revelry of emotion in the worship of the living God! such invocations to all nature, animate and inanimate, such summonings of the hidden powers of harmony, and of the breathing instruments of melody! Single hymns of this poet would have conferred immortality upon any mortal, and borne down his name as one of the most favored of the sons of men. But it is not the writings of the man which strike us with such wonder, as the actions and events of his wonderful history. He was a hero without a peer, bold in battle and generous in victory: by distress or by triumph never overcome. Though hunted like a wild beast among the mountains, and forsaken like a pelican in the wilderness, by the country whose armies he had delivered from disgrace, and by the monarch whose daughter he had won-whose son he had bound to him with cords of brotherly love, and whose own soul he was wont to charm with the sacredness of his minstrelsyhe never indulged malice or revenge against his unnatural enemies. Twice, at the peril of his life, he brought his blood-hunter within power, and twice he spared him and would not be persuaded to his injure a hair upon his head-who, when he fell in his high plans, was lamented over by David with the bitterness of a son, and his death avenged upon the sacrilegious man who had lifted his sword against the Lord's anointed. In friendship and love, and also in domestic affection, he was not less notable than in heroical endowments, and in piety to God he was most remarkable of all. He had to flee from his bedchamber in the dead of night, his friendly meetings had to be concerted upon the perilous edge of captivity and death, his food he had to seek at the risk of sacrilege, for a refuge from death to cast himself upon the people of Gath, to counterfeit idiocy, and become the laughing-stock of his enemies. And who shall tell of his hidings in the cave of Adullam, and of his wanderings in the wilderness of Ziph-in the weariness of which he had power to stand before his armed enemy with all his host, and by the generosity of his deeds, and the affectionate language which flowed from his lips, to melt into childlike weeping the obdurate spirit of King Saul, which had the nerve to evoke the spirits of the dead! King David was a man extreme in all his excellencies-a man of the highest strain, whether for counsel, for expression, or for action, in peace and in war, in exile and on the throne. That such a warm and ebullient spirit should have given way before the tide of its affections, we wonder not. We rather wonder that, tried by such extremes, his mighty spirit should not often have burst control, and enacted right forward the conqueror, the avenger, and the destroyer. But God, who anointed him from his childhood, had given him store of the best natural and inspired gifts, which preserved him from sinking under the long delay of his promised crown, and kept him from contracting any of the craft or cruelty of a hunted, persecuted man. And adversity did but bring out the splendor of his character, which might have slumbered like the fire in the flint, or the precious metal in the dull and earthly ore. But to conceive aright of the gracefulness and strength of King David's character, we must draw him into comparison with men similarly conditioned, and then we shall see how vain the world is to cope with him. Conceive a man who had saved his country, and clothed himself with gracefulness and renown in the sight of all the people by the chivalry of his deeds, won for himself intermarriage with the royal line, and by unction of the Lord's prophet been set apart to the throne itself; such a one conceive driven, with fury, from house and hold, and through tedious years deserted of every stay but heaven, with no soothing sympathies of quiet life, harassed for ever between famine and the edge of the sword, and kept in savage holds and deserts; and tell us, in the annals of men, of one so disappointed, so bereaved and straitened, maintaining not fortitude alone, but sweet composure and a heavenly frame of soul, inditing praise to no avenging deity, and couching songs in no revenge |